Articles 02.2013

The dissociation of the United States from a number of international problems by shifting these problems onto allies and delegating authority to them, a result of the United States' «imperial overheating», is based on the currently popular concept of «smart power», the very emergence of which suggests that America's former sources of power have been exhausted...

It’s a possibility the next parliamentary elections in Kosovo may take place this year bringing about real changes in Europe. It’ll be the first time the Islamic Movement to Unite, or LISBA, its Albanian-language acronym, will take part in elections. The party was registered in February 2013. It has already announced the launching of a large scale campaign going beyond the Kosovo boundaries to encompass the whole Muslim world. This is the first out-and-out Islamist party in the Balkans that has set the goal of making the Balkans a part of Islamic Caliphate...

Bulgaria is facing the wave of the largest mass protests in the last 16 years provoked by price hikes. So the resignation of Boyko Borisov government has been expected. It was this very government and big time players from Washington who made the events unfold this way... Perhaps Bulgaria doesn’t even realize it has become a country with limited sovereignty as a result of the United Sates diplomatic pressure...

Even the most casual observer of international affairs since the turn of the century is familiar with the willingness of the government of the United States to bypass international law under circumstances it alone determines. The war of aggression launched against Iraq under false pretenses ten years ago this month may be the first example that comes to mind, but there are numerous others...

The process already taking shape in the world of consolidating «larger spaces», and the return of the empires of by-gone eras may not, at first glance, seem to respond to the spirit of the times. However, we are living in an age which, in view of its uncertainty in people's minds, is indiscriminate to such an extent that it is no stranger to the most improbable policy prescriptions. The world is in a state of interregnum in which, as Zygmunt Bauman says, «change is the only constant, and the unknown - the only certainty»; in this world, Europe remains a battlefield, but nowadays the battle is between a Westphalian model of sovereign states and new forms of supranational governance...

The recent expeditions of the French in Africa clearly smack less of neoimperialism than they do neocolonialism, and have prompted many to wonder whether the events are the start of a new cycle of world politics in which an outgoing unipolarity is perhaps being replaced by a forthcoming multipolarity not hailed by everyone, or something different, something new or maybe a repeat of history, but in new packaging? Maybe something that would allow, for example, the United States «to leave without actually leaving», to continue implementing their global plans in a more complex system of interstate relations? If so, then the imperial projects and vassal relations of by-gone eras that had seemingly vanished forever will turn out to be much in demand...

...Ankara is offering to Erbil the honeypot of vastly increased revenues from oil exports through Turkey from northern Iraq and flourishing Turkish trade and investments in Kurdistan... Clearly, Turkey hopes that in the fullness of time, its much bigger economy would integrate and assimilate Kurdistan... Simply put, Turkish regional policies are increasingly feeding into the Shia-Sunni tensions fostered by Saudi Arabia and Qatar across the Middle East... To be sure, Iraq is also becoming a turf where Turkey’s rivalries with Iran are playing out and Ankara resents the Baghdad-Tehran axis supporting the Syrian regime. (On Tuesday Iraqi cabinet approved Tehran’s proposal to construct a 1500-kilometre natural gas pipeline connecting Iran’s giant South Pars fields to Syria and other export markets via Iraqi territory)...

...The policy of the West in Syria is myopic. It goes on losing control over the events in this country. In fact it gives refuge to terrorists and faces the prospect of raging terror spilling over to Europe. Hotbeds of Islamic extremism that appeared with the connivance of the West in the former Yugoslavia are sparked again under the influence of Middle East events. Europe appears to be threatened by a big fire...

The Pentagon views Chile (along with Columbia) as the most reliable US partner. The Chilean Navy is responsible for Southern Pacific. Normally it tracks drug traffickers. But there is a more important mission: watching the routes of Russian and Chinese surface ships and submarines. The fight for the resources of the Asia-Pacific has just started and the Chile’s place was defined a long time ago... The US take advantage of the fact that since a long time the Chilean military considers Bolivia, Argentina and Peru as regional enemies. The Pentagon’s policy is focused on driving a wedge in the relations between Chili and its neighbors. The policy brings results...

Bolivian President Evo Morales recently nationalized his nation’s three main airports – La Paz, Cochabama, and Santa Cruz – taking control of the facilities from the firm Servicios de Aeropuertos Bolivianos (SABSA) that operated the airports on behalf of the Barcelona-based company Albertis... Morales took a step that many Western governments should also take. As a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, a number of companies, many linked to Israelis, have concocted security schemes that have maximized profits for select individuals...

...The post-war history of Gdansk, liberated on March 30, shows that some people have a really poor memory. Gdansk, or the free city of Danzig, had never been part of Polish state till the Versailles Treaty of 1919 that gave Poland access to the Baltic Sea. Germans had accounted for the larger part of population... The USSR did much more than just liberate Polish cities. Thanks to the position of the Soviet Union taken at the Potsdam conference the Poland’s territory was increased by at least a third in comparison with what it had been before the war. Danzig was incorporated into Poland. That’s what Poles appear to forget nowadays. They feel no gratitude towards Russia. And they seem not to remember how cruelly they treated the Germans residing in Danzig...